Lively

“Momentary” just won’t cut it.

Positioning
Tone of voice
Lots of copy
Team training

Read this if you’re looking to: tower over the competition.

“What if what we do isn’t marketing but creative innovation?”

This was the penny drop moment that came after months of internal trial-and-error. Lively’s leadership team had been trying to nail their positioning and explain their offer, but with an elevator pitch spanning 20 minutes, they needed a story that would cut right to the chase. Together, we uncovered the brand’s very essence, and brought it to life across multiple dimensions.

Binary is boring

Lively was founded by Mark Mitchell and Mike White at a time when content and events were seen as two very separate marketing disciplines. They knew that combining the two resulted in bigger, more immersive experiences for brands and audiences. It was a conviction that led to some truly groundbreaking long term partnerships; like V Festival, with whom they rewrote the playbook for festival sponsorship, and Twitter, which saw the brand break out of its 140-character limit and come alive in the “real” world. Fast forward to 2023 and with competition between marketing agencies at its peak, Lively needed to stay ahead.

“The ability to collaborate is key to any partnership and you are truly that.”
Mike White, Lively

So, what do we actually do?

The simple question that proved impossible to answer. In fact, it inspired multiple responses of differing lengths and many, many tangents. We get it: it’s hard to explain what you offer when it’s totally new, and when your competitors are relying on similar levels of ambiguity too. But there was one thing that everyone could agree on, and that was the unique formula at the core of every project.

Creativity + Technology = Innovation

Two of the biggest forces shaping the future. When the two collide, we get genuine innovation. Recognising this as the true value of Lively’s work opened up a whole new ball game. Instead of selling the same thing as its competitors, Lively was in prime position to sell something even bigger and more meaningful.

Our approach

1. Create a new category

Goodbye marketing, hello creative innovation. Lively is an agency built for pioneering brands, who know that fleeting experiences just won’t cut it. Brands like Ericsson and Coinbase, who think beyond likes and views to genuinely impact culture and inspire new ideas. A position tailor-made for Lively, who had plenty of proof points to back it up.
2. Give it a voice

Tone of voice became an important component in standing out. In an industry that literally invented buzzwords, Lively’s clear-sighted, conversational tone cuts through. We also trained the whole company to pitch with clarity, conviction and their trademark character.
3. Roll out a system

We helped Lively not just to tell their story, but to truly live it across their own marketing channels. We rewrote their website and pitch materials (including hundreds of case studies) to ensure creative innovation ran through every element. Their Fresh Takes events series has become a content and community platform forging genuine connections between people (breaking barriers between ‘brands’, ‘consumers’ and ‘audiences’). And now there’s even a finetuned AI chatbot and freeroam metaverse experience to top it all off.